


In this last of meeting places

by anddirtyrain



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, F/M, season 4 spec
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-04-19 11:13:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4744226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anddirtyrain/pseuds/anddirtyrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“This isn't about you. It’s about me, and what I want. And it’s not you.” The words taste bitter on their way out, but she’s so glad she finally said them. Get the worst part over with.   “I don’t want this…anymore.” Oliver looks like she’s slapped him across the face, like she’s ripped his heart out; and she realizes the feeling is the same spreading throughout her chest. But there is no other way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“This isn’t working anymore.” Her eyes burn when she sees how he takes the words. Oliver steps back like she’s hurt him worse than any villain they’ve ever encountered. He looks at her like she’s killing him.

Felicity had spent the entire walk home trying to figure out how to say it. How to put it into words. Her chest felt tight when she finally knocked on the door and he’d been instantly worried about her, taking her coat and asking her what was wrong. He’d pulled her into his arms and told her that whatever had happened it would be all right, not knowing that she was about to pull the rug from under him.

“Felicity?” she feels his entire body tense up at his words. There’s shock on his face when he lets his arms fall from around her, stepping back to look at her face. “Are you…Are you talking about… _us_?”

She nods once, hard. She doesn’t think she could talk right now, not when she can see every dream he had for the both of them fall apart in the blue of his eyes.

“No…I--” He tries speaking, and then clears his throat. But it doesn’t really matter if he can make his voice stop sounding hoarse, she can still see the wetness over his eyes. He’s going to make this as difficult as possible for her, isn’t he? “Was it something I did? Was it being back here? I--Whatever it is…I promise…I’ll be better. I’ll be better for you. You don't have to-”

“It’s not about you, Oliver.” God, she’s really going to bring out that line. She doesn't know how to do this. She's never known how to hurt him, never wanted to, not ever. “It’s about me.” She’s crying now. She can feel the tears finally slip past her eyes and damn it she’d been doing a half-decent job of containing them so far.

“I don’t understand,” he steps closer to her and she steps away from him before he can touch her. Before his hand makes contact with her bare skin and she loses all resolve.

“It’s about me, and what _I_ want. And it’s not you.” The words taste bitter on their way out, but she’s so glad she finally said them. Get the worst part over with.   “I don’t want this… _us_ … anymore.”

He looks like she’s slapped him across the face, like she’s ripped his heart out; and she realizes the feeling is the same spreading throughout her chest. But there is no other way.

“Felicity…I love you,” he tells her, his voice small, as painfully hopeful as it is heartbreaking. “I love you more than anything, more than I… And I know you love me. We can fix this. I promise you I’ll fix this.”

The first tear hits his cheek. She wants to die.

“I don’t want to fix this.”

“I know…what I am, the things I’ve done…I know I don’t deserve your love. But…We were happy. I thought you were ha- what changed? When?” His voice becomes a little more desperate, his words tripping over each other like a little boy with untied shoelaces. He looks like one as he stares at her, pure confusion on his face. He doesn’t understand and she can’t help him.

She doesn’t give him an answer. The door is merely a few steps behind him and she’s so close to feeling relief, but he’s standing between her and the dark street.

“It’s over, Oliver” she says, with a sense of finality that hangs around the half-deserted house. They’d never gotten around to buying the rest of the furniture, God. And she’s glad now. So glad. “Get out of my way,” she tells him, her voice low and rough, and she’s glad the tone of it hides the way it breaks at the end. That her closed fist hide the tremble of her hands. His own hands shake a little, as if he was itching to touch her, to grab her and kiss her one last time. But he doesn't.

She can pinpoint the exact moment the fight goes out of him, how he slumps like his legs aren’t strong enough to hold him and covers his face with one hand. He steps aside and lets her walk out. She doesn’t look back even when he hears the sound of his fist colliding with the table. She hears the sound of glass shattering and can see in her mind’s eye the photos of their time together, now only broken frames and promises shattered on the floor.

But she still doesn’t turn back. Doesn’t waver.

A part of her had always known it would be that easy. That even after everything they had been through together a few words from her could break that beautiful, impossible man. She wasn’t the only one who knew it.

She makes her legs carry her until the turn of the drive way, where he waits for her, white-hair glowing unnaturally on the low light of the street lamps.

“It’s done,” she tells him.

“Good choice Ms. Smoak,” Damien Darhk tells her, pulling up a tablet with a timer on it and stopping the countdown. “Your friends and their little makeshift lair should be safe for now. I must say, I expected more from Star City’s vigilantes but, well, for a man like me it’s easy to be disappointed in people. You on the other, have not disappointed me yet. This city could use people like you once we have rebuilt it.”

“What do you want from me?” she asks, clenching her teeth as pure rage flows through her veins. Her chest aches but she won’t cry, not in front of him. “Because I can’t tell you how much I do not care about your evil monologue.”

“Ah, but it is not evil, Ms. Smoak. It makes perfect sense. You’re smart enough. In time…you’ll understand.” A black van pulls up next to them, and the door opens at the same he extends his hand. She’d be impressed if she wasn’t so terrified, so devastated she thought she would be sick.

“For now, step inside. I’m sure your father is dying to see you again.”

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

She doesn’t know how long they’re on the road. She’s actually 99% sure she was drugged the minute she stepped inside the car because it feels like mere minutes and that can’t be right. Her head feels foggy and the back of her eyes hurt as if she’d been crying. Bit by bit her mind clears and she remembers what she did to Oliver tonight and actually that seems like an entirely possible act. Actually, she doesn’t want to think about crying in her drugged sleep in front of Damien Darhk. It makes everything a little bit worse. She can feel his piercing, icy blue eyes on her, and makes it a point to look out the window, even if it’s so dark outside she can’t make out anything. 

He’d approached her the minute she’d stepped outside the Palmer Technologies bodega Team Arrow is currently using as a base of operations. She’d sent Oliver home hours ago, and stayed behind to walk Laurel through using the new facial recognition software she installed (which had turned into walking Dig through the same thing, and updating the biometric lock she’d bought for the makeshift lair the minute they came back- lot of good that did, considering that Darhk’s men managed to rig the place with explosives).

She hadn’t been scared at first. In the dark he’d only looked like a well-dressed older man and it was only when he was right in front of her that she made out his face and realized who he was. Her contacts had been fogging up for the last part of the afternoon and she hadn’t spared 5 minutes to change into her glasses. She regretted that decision instantly.

He’d covered her mouth with a meaty hand before she could scream.

He’d said he would make sure her mother’s head was delivered to her house if she made a sound and that shut her up pretty efficiently. Her blood ran cold. She hadn’t understood Oliver and Laurel when they’d explained what it was like, meeting him. They’d faced so many that this one man intimidating them had made very little sense. Standing in front of Damien Darhk then, her heart on her throat, she finally got it. It was like staring the devil in the face.

He’d showed her the timer then. Explained about the bombs positioned between the walls of the Arrow cave, which had been there for God knows how long. He’d had them made since the beginning, maybe before Oliver and she even came back. They had no idea. And they’d never be able to escape unscathed from an explosion of that size, not with where the bombs were placed. Thea was there right now, and Digg. Laurel would be getting her things ready to leave. She couldn’t risk anything happening to them.

He said he needed her to come with him, and the least suspicios her disappearance was, the better. They didn’t need the vigilantes chasing after her, he said. He had plans for them, just like he had plans for her.

They stopped by her apartment first, a few boxes still by the front door and a whole couch filled with knick knacks that Oliver promised to help her sort out. They’d found a house last week, when it became obvious that they’re stay in Star city would be more on the permanent side.

She had wracked her brain the whole tense ride trying to figure out a way to delay whatever he had planned. To give the team time to find her.

“I don’t live here anymore, what if I don’t have the key?” she’d foolishly asked right outside, and his fingernails digging into the back of her neck had been his answer.

“Do not play with me, Ms. Smoak. I do not presume to know about the people you have dealt with before, but I don’t take kindly to anyone insulting my intelligence.”

So she’d opened the door, and left a note addressed to Oliver telling him she was going to visit her mom and not to come after her. It was right about then she started crying quietly, trying to contain her gasps because she did not want to die.

It seemed she’d said so out loud, because he told that she would not be dying anytime soon if he could help it. That she was much more useful alive, unlike her friends.

He’d told her what to do with Oliver on the way there. End things. Make sure he didn’t follow her. If he stepped out of the house she’d be responsible for the bullet that would end up between his eyes. After all, their friend Diggle seemed to be the leader now, and would suffice for what he had in mind. He’d gone quiet then, a pleasant sort of smile on her face that make the hair on her arms stand on end. A coil of nausea tightened in her stomach.

So she’d done it, she’d hurt him and she was only hoping she would get the chance to apologize and tell him that she could never mean what she said. She’d always want him. But she’d known that Oliver, for such a strong, big man-he had a fragile heart. She could break it, and she used that knowledge to her advantage, to protect all of them- she hoped he would understand.

“We’re here,” Darhk’s cool voice shakes her out of her thoughts, and she looks out the window trying to gauge where ‘here’ is. It looks underground, the parking lot is dark and empty.

She gets off the car in what she hopes are not so unsteady legs and finds herself staring into the face of a man she hasn’t seen since she was a little girl.

.

He doesn’t have any pride to swallow, as he calls her over and over again. He could never be like that with Felicity. He didn’t beg her to stay simply because a part of him knew she was right. She deserves so much better than him. Someone less damaged. She deserves the world and he’d accepted, the minute the words left her mouth, that he couldn’t give it to her. But God he’d tried. He would spend the rest of his life trying if she let him.

“Felicity, please tell me where you’re spending the night,” he left in a voicemail. “Are you going back to your apartment? Just—call me back. Text. I--” He cuts the call.

His ears are still ringing from her words. He’s still not entirely sure of what happened. He’d sat down on their couch, the one she picked out, and held his head while trying to make sense of it all. Before he knew it 20 minutes had gone by, and he was worrying about her. He’d spent nearly every minute of every day with her for months…being apart from her lately had taken a toll on him. He’d visited her every day at lunch at Palmer technologies; dropped her off and picked her up but it hadn’t been enough for him. Was that it? Had he smothered her? He can’t find it in himself to stop now, as he resorts to texting her.

_Come back to the house, I’ll be gone when you get here._

He pulls on a hoodie as he searches for the car keys. He finds them in the kitchen, next to the bottle of wine he’d pulled out to go with the dinner he’d made her. He gets out of the house before he can give it anymore thought.

He arrives at the lair 10 minutes later, and pulls out his cellphone to text her again before going in.

_Can you text me please_

_I just want to know you’re ok_

He enters, hoping against hope that its empty, but he isn’t that lucky.

“Ollie! Why are you back here again?” Thea asks him offhandedly as she goes around, turning off the computers and the lights. Her back is to him and he’s glad. “Felicity left like half an hour ago, I was just about to head to the club—is everything okay?”

He looks up to find her staring at him.

“Is Felicity, okay?” her brow furrows with the words, and she looks at the door as if expecting her to come in.

“Yeah, she’s fine Speedy,” he says his voice rougher than he’d expected.

“Then what are you doing here? You’re scaring me—“

“It’s nothing like that, Thea,” he’s quick to say. “She--she broke up with me, and I kind of needed a place to stay.” He shrugs, hoping he doesn’t look as miserable as he feels.

“She what?! That’s not possible.”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” he tells her. He couldn’t even if he wanted to, he’s still not entirely sure what happened himself.

“Well, where is she?”

“I think she must’ve gone back to her old apartment; she hasn’t sold it yet. But… she didn’t take the car and she won’t answer my calls.”

His sister says nothing, just throws her arms around him and hugs him. He didn’t know how much he needed the contact.

“You’ll figure it out, okay,” she says, her voice muffled by his hoodie. She pulls back but he doesn’t meet her eyes. “Hey. She loves you. She’s been stressed lately, I’m sure this is temporary.”

He nods, trying to smile for her sake, but he knows if Felicity realized what he’s always known deep down…it won’t be temporary.

“Can you call her, see where she’s staying?” he asks.

“Yeah, sure.” She nods, grabbing her cellphone.

She looks at him after a minute. “It goes straight to voicemail”

The beginning of a panic attacks begin to form somewhere on his stomach.

“Maybe she turned it off?” Thea asks, her eyes worried, but he would bet it’s for him and not for Felicity.

“I’m going to swing by her place, just to make sure.”

“Are you sure that’s smart? If she’s so pissed she’d say that—“

“I need to know she’s fine,” he tells her. Whatever happens between them he needs to know she got home fine, that’s she’s safe. It’s getting late and he hates thinking of her out there, taking a cab or waiting by herself at the bus station.

“Okay.”

He doesn’t bother putting on the hood. He just gets on his old motorcycle and drives.  

The house seems empty when he arrives, the lights are out and her neighbors seem to be asleep already. He hesitates a moment before he breaks the latch on the window and sneaks in.  The more time passes and the more he wants an explanation from her, he’d take anything she’d give him right now.

But she’s not inside, and the feeling inside his chest expands until it threatens to choke him. _Where is she?_ He walks through her house until he sees a post-it note on her refrigerator, her familiar handwriting jumping at him from the piece of paper.

He calls Thea right away.

“Is she okay?” his sister asks.

“She’s not here. I need you to run a search,” he says right away, and he can hear the buzz of the monitors coming back to life. “Did she buy a ticket to Vegas in the past two hours?”

They were fine this afternoon. He knows they were fine. It must’ve been a split decision on her part. It takes Thea a minute to get the answers and he feels more confused than ever. What went wrong?

“Ollie…”

“Yes?”

“It seems she bought a one way ticket to Las Vegas 38 minutes ago. The flight leaves in 10.”

Something doesn’t feel right in his gut. It doesn’t feel like her. She wouldn’t run, even if she was done with him she wouldn’t…

“Can you hack into the airport’s security cameras, tell me if you can see her?”

“None of the camera feeds Felicity’s hacked already are of the airport and I-- I don’t know how. I can’t do that.”

“I’m going to try and catch her, okay?”

“Ollie, are you sure this isn’t her needing some time after…everything?”

“I don’t know, but something doesn’t feel right,” he walks out of her apartment. “I’m going to try to talk to her before the plane leaves.”

“Keep me posted.”

“Bye Speedy.”

As soon as he gets on the motorcycle he knows he won’t make it. It’s a 20 minute ride to the airport and he knows that he won’t get there in time, not even breaking a few dozen traffic rules.

He thought they were okay. She’d been distant lately, but he thought it was the stress of handling the company during the day and helping the team during the night. She was barely getting any sleep but she still kissed him like she meant it. Maybe he was so encapsulated in the thought that he could have everything he wanted that he missed the signs. His cellphone starts ringing but he has no plans of stopping to pick it up. He knows it’s Thea, what she’ll tell him before even picking up. Once she realizes he’s not going to answer she sends a text. He forces himself to stop the bike then.

_Stop. The flight’s already left._

For the second time that night he feels his breath leave him.


	3. Chapter 3

“It’s been a while.”

“You don’t say.” She’s trying really hard to be brave, and mentally pats herself on the shoulder when her voice sounds much stronger than how she actually feels.

Felicity can’t take her eyes of him. The dark brown hair she inherited, that she covered up with black dye and then blonde, trying to get as far away from his memory as she could…it’s giving her the oddest sense of Deja-vu. He stands tall in front of her chair, and she feels five years old all over again as she looks up into his face. “I was wearing pigtails the last time we talked.”

“Yes,” he says, nodding and shrugging his shoulders as though it couldn’t be helped.  “I _am_ sorry about that, the way I said goodbye. You didn’t deserve that.” He isn’t apologizing for leaving, she realizes, and contains a wry smile.  Apparently it didn’t bother him at all. She doesn’t know what’s worse, doesn’t even care anymore.

 The room is cold, her shoulders ache, and the zip ties dig into her wrists. A part of her is flattered enough that they thought it was necessary to physically restrain her (as if she could escape this heavily armed facility). She feels something bubble in her chest, isn’t sure if it’s a sob or a laugh and is she about to have a panic attack? (Felicity tries to remember the symptoms. Fight or Flight response? Check. Fear? Double check. But that is understandable. Is she panicking?)

She remembers Oliver having a panic attack a month into their road trip. He’d been sweating and oh so cold, and trying to get him to tell her what was wrong felt like digging a brick out of quicksand. She doesn’t think she’s feeling that, but the thought of Oliver might just be what pushes her over that edge. God, she needs him right now.

“I tried to get them to cut you lose, by the way. It’s not like you can do anything.” Her father says, misinterpreting her distress. The zip ties are really the least of her problems. (And she hates him). “This isn’t how I planned for us to meet again, Lissy.”

Her whole body jumps at the nickname. It’s been years since anyone has called her that. (She really hates him.) Her mom dropped the nickname because she would burst out crying anytime she used it.

It just makes the only thing she wants right now even more poignant. Oliver’s strong arms around her, his voice sure and low in her ears. His hurt expression flashes in her mind and she wonder if she’ll even be alive the next time he sees her.

 _Panic attack here we go._ She hopes the bad guys – _of which her deadbeat dad is one oh my god-_ have complimentary paper bags. That’d be funny, wouldn’t it be? They being so used to scaring the bejesus out of people that they needed to start stocking up on paper bags to get through their interrogatories—

“Felicity,” his voice sounds like a reprimand.  “Your mind still wanders, I see. So you never outgrew that bad habit.” He sounds disappointed and she—she’s actually surprised by how much she wants to hurt him right now. Like, actually physically hurt him. She thought she’d made her peace with him ages ago - apparently _not_.  “But we’ll have time to catch up later. Right now, you need to help us.”

“Are you out of your _fucking_ mind?” She doesn’t curse very often, if at all. She’s far too smart to think curse words add anything of weight to discussions; but this is calculated, and she enjoys the startled look he gets at her words. Let him see she’s not a child anymore. If there ever was a time he could control her it’s gone, and she has nothing but contempt for the man standing in front of her.

 Every good childhood memory she had was reduced to nothing when she realized who he worked for, the kind of man he really was. Maybe always had been.

 “Now, Lissy-“

 “What makes you think I would even _consider_ helping you?”

 “You don’t have a choice,” he says with finality. “I don’t necessarily approve of Damien’s methods, but for the good of your mother, your friends, of that boyfriend of yours, you’ll do as you’re told.”

 At the mention of her family she curls a little onto herself, and hopes he doesn’t notice.

 “Do you know where we are?” he asks.

 “Supervillain club headquarters?”

 “We are underground, 12 feet of solid concrete above—“

 “Why bring me here?” she interrupts him, deciding that if she’s to stand a chance she needs to gain a little ground here. And also, she just really needs some answers. “Darhk could’ve just killed me. I find it hard to believe you’d need _me_ as a member of Team Doom.”

 “Don’t sell yourself short Felicity,” he says, and she gets this pang on her chest because he sounds the same he did when she was 5 years old, and had come home crying because the boys in her class wouldn’t let her build towers with them. “That incident in college? Things like that get the attention of certain organizations.”

 “You mean HIVE,” she tells him, and she’s not—she’s not going to cry.

 “Indeed. They keep tabs on people like you and me.” He drags a chair from against the wall and sits in front of her, so close she scoots away until her shoulders tinge with pain. “See, most of them never amount to anything. They spend their lives in a cubicle or creating apps. When that boy took the blame the interest died with him, but I knew the truth. I hadn’t told anyone you were mine at the time, though. I wanted you to have a normal life until you were ready. Until you could do what you were always meant to.”

That sends a chill through her body. It makes her feel like a pet of sorts. Like he’s been ‘letting’ her have a life, only waiting to collect at some point or another. It makes her feel sick.

 He misunderstands the wideness of her gaze and raises a hand as if to comfort her—stopping when he sees her visibly blanch at his movements

 “Don’t look so shocked. You’re my daughter. Do you honestly think I wouldn’t keep track of you?”

 “You might have been my father once, but make no mistake; now you are _nothing_ but an unfortunate choice of sperm donor,” she spits out.

 “Come on Lissy, you know who you have to thank for that brain of yours.”

 “Me!” she exclaims. She owes him nothing. She built herself and no one’s going to take that away from her.

 He looks surprised at her outburst. Studies her as if trying to reconcile the image of the shy, awkward little girl she once had been with the woman sitting in front of him now.

 “Very well,” he says finally, and she oddly feels like she’s won a battle. “I didn’t expect you to comply out of family ties, though that certainly would’ve been easier. Do you really want to know why you’re here and not lying in a pool of your own blood? _Because I vouched for you_.

 You’ll learn soon enough that it’s better to be alive regardless of the cost, than die for a cause that doesn’t stand a chance. The world is changing felicity. There’s the red freak in central city, talk of super humans and angels and time travel. For men like Damien Darhk, for the organization he represents? It is not convenient for the world to change in that way, not so fast. Not so...out of control. Starling city is where this madness started—“

 “And this is where it will end?” she ventures bitterly.

 “No. This is where examples will be made. You wanted to save this city, didn’t you? Eliminating these ‘heroes’ is the only way; and you want to be standing on the right side of the line when it all comes to a head.”  He stops talking for a moment, looks at her with a tenderness she craved once upon a time-but no longer wants or needs.  “You’re my daughter, this is where you have always been supposed to be.”

 “And what if I still say no?”

 “Oh, Lissy….I was hoping you wouldn’t say that.”

 

➳

 

When he gets back it’s not Thea waiting for him but Dig, and the look of alarm in the man’s face makes every single horrible thing he’s imagined feel a little more real.

 “Thea told me what happened.”

 “Something doesn’t feel right about this, Dig.”

 “I know. That girl loves you Oliver,” he says, and something in Oliver’s chest breaks at that, starts moving through his ribcage like thick poison. The numbing pain blooms and spreads. “Running off like this, without an explanation—it’s not like her.”

 It’s then when Thea walks, her brow furrowed in a way that drives him to brace himself.

 “I called her mom. She said she had no idea Felicity was heading there.” Thea looks at Oliver, gauging his reaction.  “She’s heading to the airport anyways and she’ll call when the flight lands.”

 Both Diggle and Thea stare at him, as if expecting him to give them their next course of action but he comes up empty. Worry is threatening to choke him. Before, he was caught in the pain but now he realizes his felicity wouldn’t do this to him, not like that.

 He’d had time to think driving back to the lair, time to process—and none of this feels like Felicity. He thinks back to her running her fingertips over the veins in his arms and wrists and telling him she’d love him for as long as her heart beat. It makes him dizzy now.

 “Laurel,” Dig’s voice breaks him out of it, and when he turns around she’s walking in, her hair in disarray and no makeup on her face. He can see now so clearly what Felicity meant when she said they were a team.

 “Did you find her?”

 “Nothing yet,” Thea speaks up. “Her mom is gonna call us when her flight lands, but I think we should start looking for her here in Starling. Star. Whatever.”

 “I’ll check the security cameras,” Laurel nods quickly, and he doesn’t have time to reflect on how they all spring into movement, while he just stands there, so utterly useless. “I mean…she’s probably fine Oliver, but it wouldn’t hurt, you know.”

 “Yes, yeah…thank you.”

 “Don’t mention it. She’s my friend too.”

The numbness that’s taken hold of his body begins to clear, and an excruciating rage replaces it.

If someone….if Darhktook advantage of his own insecurities to hurt Felicity…

 “Her mom will probably call us soon to tell us she’s with her, and you’ll only have to worry about buttering her up to take you back,” Thea tells him, and she can almost believe that, can almost trust that whatever his baby sister tells him is the truth and Felicity is safe—it’s all broken a second later when Laurel’s alarmed voice comes from the computers.

 “Guys?” pain hits him, lightning fast. He just _knows_. “Video feed from outside isn’t clear for at least 10 minutes after she left. Like something jammed the surveillance camera.” Laurel looks up, and he notices the look they share between them, not voicing out loud what he now- _damn it--_ knows to be true. His frantic face is reflected from the computer screens. “But she took her car home it—it doesn’t make sense.”

 “Could it be a coincidence?” Thea asks, but she knows as well as he that there are no coincidences in the life they’ve chosen. There is certainty-there is _this_.

 “Traffic cams nearby?” he asks, and he’s not surprised at how out of control his voice sounds. He drags a hand down his face, trying to get a hold of himself.

 “Yes…her car is in a few. She seems to follow the route to your place. There…there doesn’t seem to be anyone in the car with her,” she informs them. “Maybe it is a coincidence, the cameras could be malfunctioning.”

 “No, Lyla installed them, and I checked them yesterday,” Dig pipes up. “Someone jammed the signal.”

 “I lost her. We don’t reach that far.” Laurel sits back, the now useless video still running in the screen.

 “Ollie, you have—“

“Yes.” He grabs the keyboard and types as fast as he can, the nervous thrum of energy making his fingers slip twice.

 “I got it,” Laurel says, and takes over once she notices his intent. “Password?”

 The video shows up in the screen and his thumb and index fingers move rapidly against each other, in a way he never noticed he did until Felicity pointed it out to him, months before they were together. She called it a nervous tick, a surefire sign he was itching to put an arrow on someone. If anyone touched her that’s exactly what would happen.

 The video feed shows Felicity entering their house, he can see himself hugging her at the doorway and then they disappear inside the house. Three minutes go by, then five. He knows what’s going on inside. His worst nightmare come true. Her voice telling him she didn’t want him anymore has plagued his nightmare as much as the first time he was tortured now, only infinitely more painful. Seven minutes after she steps inside of the house she walks out, her back ramrod straight and her face wet—why did he let her walk out? Even if she’s in Vegas right now, safe and sound—why did he let her leave crying?

 The video feed starts breaking up once she nears the sidewalk, and the screen goes nearly black for a few moments.

 “What’s going on?”

 “I don’t know….the signal…” Laurel rewinds the video and plays it again but it becomes unclear in the same moment and all he’s left is an unmoving image of Felicity, his Felicity—looking devastated.

 “Someone jammed the signal,” Dig voices out loud.

 “Wait!” Laurel exclaims. “She’s getting into a black van in one of the frames… but I can’t get a license plate. I could try the city’s traffic cameras but Felicity’s neighborhood never needed us hacking into them and…it’d take me hours if I even managed to do it—“

 “We don’t have that long,” he breathes –he’s just – he’s fucking helpless. _He let her go._

 “Can you try?” Thea asks, at the same time Dig pulls out his cellphone.

 “I’m gonna call Lyla, she has some friends in ARGUS who owe her a couple of favors.”

 He nods, but the pressure around his lungs doesn’t loosen. Someone—someone took her, and he was right inside. _He was right fucking there!_  And now –what are they supposed to do? They have nothing to go on, not without her—

 “Curtis! Call Curtis.”

 “Who?” Thea looks at him as if he’s lost his mind.

 “Felicity’s new right hand man at Palmer Tech,” Diggle says, pulling away from the cellphone. “Man, are you sure?”

 “Felicity hired him for a reason. If she trusts him, so do I.”

 

➳

 

The man shows up not fifteen minutes after Oliver calls him, a little frantic, and asks him to come over to the address-as soon as possible. They use the time to suit up. Oliver pulls own his new leathers with a bad taste at the back of his mouth, probably fear, probably the tears that threaten to fall when he remembers her showing it to him—the adorable nervousness, the sweet smile she’d given him, and he remembers her tonight –realizes he’s failed her. Over and over again. And _now,_ now she could be hurt or worse--

 “Hello? Mr.Quen!” Curtis calls out to the seemingly empty parking lot, they can see him clearly through the security cameras as he looks around.

 “Come in,” Thea tells him, pulling her quiver onto her back.

 “Holy shit.” The young man’s are blown wide.

 “Come in, now!”

 “Yeah, absolutely! I mean, Okay,” he hurries inside and Thea slams the door closed behind him.

 “But Mr. Queen, Oliver Queen, called me, and he said to meet--”

 “We need your help.” The man’s mouth falls open when he sees him in the suit.

 “Holy. Shit.” He nearly drops his laptop. “Oh my God, you just became—“

 “Curtis, we don’t have time for this.”

 “All right, yeah.  You said this was about Felicity, is she in trouble?” He asks, before whispering to himself. “Now I know why she’s such a badass oh my god—“

 “Yes. Someone took her.”

 “What? Who?!”

 “That’s what we need to find out.” He guides the young man to Felicity’s set up, the computers already streaming fast lines from Felicity’s various program that he has no hope of understanding.

 “Sweet,” Curtis whispers, amazed, and his wonder seems so like Felicity’s—it makes everything he’s trying to tramp down flare up inside him. He’ll find her. God, he’ll get to her and apologize and spend the rest of his goddamn life making sure he’ll never fail her again.

 “Can you follow that van?” He points to the one static image—that of Felicity climbing into a black van on the curb of the street.

 “You’re talking about hacking into the city’s traffic cameras,” Curtis says, looking around him. He notices every single person in the room simply staring at him.

 “Oookay,” he drawls out, and starts typing and muttering to himself. Soon enough new images fill the screen, and he sees—

 “Darhk,” Oliver bites out. Bile rises in his throat. The man climbs into the van after Felicity, and they speed down the dark street.

 “Thea is staying here, the rest of us, let’s go,” Dig announces, pulling on his helmet.

 “They went down 59th and Park,” Curtis pipes in. “They took a left—“

 “Put this on,” he tells Curtis, extending a comm. “I’m gonna need you to guide me, okay?” he asks.

 “ _So okay,_ ” Curtis murmurs.  

 

➳

 

“Down Fifth,” Curtis’ voice says in his ear. “Take the next out, the street that veers off towards the docks.” He changes gears and makes a sharp turn at the next road, taking him away from the city. He lost Dig more than five minutes ago, and he’s pretty sure it’s a miracle he hasn’t hit anything by now. He hasn’t driven this fast since he was a stupid teenager.

 “I don’t —I don’t have eyes there, Mr. Queen, but…yeah! They have surveillance, God bless Wi-Fi. It’s a factory. The van is parked outside!”

 He kicks up dirt as he tries to stop the motorcycle, stabilizes it at the last second before jumping down and pulling up his bow. He doesn’t see anyone around, but knows better than to believe the place isn’t surveilled. If they’re keeping Felicity here…it must be. _They are keeping her here._ He needs to believe that. But a part of him is screaming that this is too easy, and with Darhk nothing is easy.

 “Felicity?” he pulls open the sliding door of the van, but finds it empty.  He eyes the doors of the factory, his very heartbeat pulling him inside. She needs to be here. She needs to be okay.

 “I’m going inside,” he says.

 “Mr. Queen?”

 “Ollie don’t do anything stupid.”

 “Wait for backup Oliver, I’m 2 minutes away,” Diggle tells him, and he hears the screech of the tires on the asphalt. But Felicity is so close that he…he can’t. He hears Dig curse before he cuts off the comm.

 He enters the factory through the back door, after hearing absolutely nothing from inside. A quick look through the window proves the place seemingly empty, and he feels his heart drop to his stomach.

 He steps inside, his eyes immediately assessing the place. The air is stale and damp, and there are signs people have been here recently—but a more careful look lets him know it’s been at least a few hours. Factory workers most likely. _She’s_ not here. For a second he can’t breathe. For one second everything that’s happened tonight catches up to him and he forces inside the disheartened cry bubbling up the back of his throat. _Where is she_? Is she…God he needs her. Pain is sharp and cruel as it slides down his throat, takes up residence in the place where his heart is supposed to be.

  _There’s nothing fucking here._

 Nothing…but a cellphone on the floor. _Her_ cellphone. The minute he picks it up it starts downloading a video file.

 Tears fall hot and fast from his eyes the moment he opens it. No. Please, _no_.

 Felicity’s slouched in a metal chair, her hands seemingly tied behind her. It’s a white, empty room. Nothing that he can recognize from Starling. So it was just a wild goose chase. He’s right where Darhk wanted him to be.

 “She’s really something, isn’t she?” A voice he recognizes as Darhk asks from behind the camera. “Unfortunately, she is --much like you, Green Arrow-- part of a new and rare species. Heroes, you call yourself.” His voice takes on a new and amicable tone of voice.

 “Did you take biology in school? Have you heard the term ‘invasive species’? It refers to an organism that is not native to an ecosystem.

It can arrive by accident, but sometimes man provokes it, thinking erroneously that this new species will improve the ecosystem it’s been thrust into. But it doesn’t. It causes harm after a while.

See, this invasive species doesn’t have any natural predators to control it. It spreads quickly over larger and larger areas. After long enough, they become nearly impossible to eradicate.” 

Annoyance begins to bleed into his voice, and an invisible hands tightens against Oliver's throat, cutting off his air. 

“Your kind has disrupted the balance of this city for years now. Its spreading to other cities, soon enough to the rest of the country. The world could get the wrong idea from what you have started, Arrow. And I can’t have that.”

 A glock appears inside the frame, pointing straight at the woman he loves more than his own life.

 “Don’t take it personally. Everyone knows to strike down a snake you have to cut off its head.”

 The shot rings out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry.


	4. Chapter 4

  _He woke up to warmth and sunlight and barely there pressure going up and down his lower back. When he finally opened his eyes, he found Felicity staring at him, a smile on her face that only grew when she realized he was awake. He ran the back of his finger down the side of her chin, marveling at this woman. Last year he would have woken up to oppressing fear but now all he felt was comfort, peace._

_“Good morning,” she said, continuing her hands gentle strokes. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you,” she whispered throatily, her voice still raspy with sleep. “Mmm just like touching you.” She closed her eyes at that. It still shook him a little, how she didn’t seem to notice the scarred, damaged skin beneath her fingers._

_He smiled, grabbing the wandering hand that trailed up his side, and pressed a kiss to her palm. Her arm jumped a little at the contact with his face-he hadn’t shaved for a while._

_“Prickly,” she complained half-heartedly, her eyes still closed, and he chuckled low in his throat. He returned her hand to where he found it, her fingertips just shy of the belt of burns that matted his lower back._

_“Want me to keep doing that?” she asked him, her voice soft.  He shyly nodded his assent.  Her hand resumed its path as though there was nothing there. No scars or thick, damaged skin, just him._

_“Why don’t you get some more sleep?” she suggested._

_He’d been running on 4, maybe 5 hours of sleep a night when he was the arrow. When felicity noted his sleeping patterns, she became rather…passionate, about him getting more sleep. She even instituted nap Sundays, that more often than not ended with her asleep and him gazing at her, but he appreciated her concern. What he didn’t do is answer her question._

_“I love you,” he just told her, and her entire face lit up with joy he still wasn’t sure how he could put there. She grabbed his waist for balance as she pushed herself up from the pillows and landed a kiss to his mouth, unassuming and sweet._

_She plopped back down afterwards, and he licked his lips before leaning forward and capturing her lower one between his. He sucked on the tender flesh and she moaned when he pulled away. He rested his forehead against hers, eyes still closed, and reveled on the aching sweetness of having her so close but not touching her, not really- her smell enveloping him. He kissed her one last time before returning to his side of the bed._

_Her eyes opened, hazy with lust, foggy with sleep. He never wanted to wake up to anything else._

_“Love you too,” she told him, her delicate fingers cradling his own calloused ones. “So in love with you Oliver,” she whispered, and her hand began its trip up and down his back again. Over the burn scars, the place where Shado’s tattoo used to be. It relaxed him, sent him back to sleep even as the beginning signs of arousal made themselves known._

_Maybe when he woke again kisses would lead to more, but they weren’t on a time frame anymore, they had all the time in the world._

➳

When Dig walks in, he finds Oliver on his knees in the floor.

“She here?!” he asks, but knows he won’t get a good answer. The place seems deserted, no trace of felicity around. “Oliver!” The factory looms big and cold around them, and the picture of him reduced to his knees is enough to send him panicking and calling for Laurel to hurry up.

Oliver looks up then, and the tears in his eyes make a cold shudder run through his body.

“God, no.” He approaches Oliver, and his zone in on the cellphone he holds in his hand. His fingertips are white from clutching it. A video is running on the screen, and even from the angle bile rises up in his throat. “What the hell is that?”

Oliver doesn’t answer, he just kneels there, and before he can ask again the sound of a gunshot comes from the device

 “Oliver!” He takes the cellphone from his grip and sees the video, his hands trembling. _Felicity._

She’s unconscious and apparently tied, her arms behind her-it makes her shoulders seem sharper and her so much younger. Darhk’s voice dominates the recording. The nut job drones about biology or the like, but he only pays attention to the blonde. He holds his breathing when the gun appears on the frame. The focus moves and then a gunshot resonates inside the small room.

 Oliver’s gasps on the floor at the sound. The man is digging in his fingers into his thigh and running his free hand through his hair, over his face-as his shoulders shake, but there’s no sound. He’s falling apart so Dig knows he can’t afford to. Oliver can’t think with a clear head right now, so he tries. Their girl is not gone. She can’t be. He re-watches the video; but there’s nothing obvious they can use to figure out where it is. And the end again.  The screen camera moves to the side, focusing on the floor before he can actually see her getting shot.

“Oliver!”

“He shot her Dig,” he says.

“No. You don’t know that. He’s toying with us.”

Oliver looks up at him with unfocused eyes, seemingly burning in his particular brand of hell. The sound of a door banging sends them both to their feet, but it’s just Laurel, gun drawn, walking in through the door. She stops a few feet away, her eyes on Oliver’s face.

 “Oh god, is she…”

 “No! But she’s not here. And Darhk left us a video of her.” He passes the cellphone to her, not before lowering the volume because it makes Oliver jump like a caged animal. “He’s taunting us.”

“We don’t know that,” Oliver says, his voice ragged.

“Oliver,” he grabs his shoulder, hard enough to make him pay attention. “You and I, we know Darhk. If he was going to kill her he would have showed it to us. He would have sent us her body.”

 Oliver jumps at the word, and runs a hand through his haggard face as he tries to hold in his breaths. The man is crumbling, and none of them, least of all Felicity, can afford that. He’s never seen Oliver like this, except when they first arrived him at the hospital, the night Thea nearly died. He’s so close to becoming unhinged the concept is frightening and Dig, he’s familiar with the feeling. Not knowing the fate of the woman you love will do that to you.

 “ _She’s alive_. Think, man.” He squeezes Oliver’s shoulder harder, and finally something like focus comes over his features. “I know how much you love her, so I need you to get yourself together and think, for _her_.”

 “We can’t see blood in the frame,” Oliver says. And beside them he can see Laurel jump at the last part of the video. “At short range-” he clears his throat, “there would have been blood. A lot of it-“

 “Yes. And there’s none.  He’s trying to scare you, Oliver.”

Determination falls over his features and Dig finally lets go. He turns his comm link back on.

“Curtis?”

“I’m sorry Mr.Queen, I really thought she’d-“

 “They must have used the side of the van and the factory to change cars. Did you get eyes on their new car?” Dig breathes a sigh of relief at Oliver’s words, and Laurel visibly relaxes as well. They don’t know how to deal with a broken Oliver. That had always been Felicity.

“No sir, they don’t have security cameras on the back,” the boy answers.

 Oliver nods, his hands on his hips and his breath coming fast. He paces in the empty space, thinking so hard Dig can almost hear it.

 “We gotta go back,” Diggle says out loud. “Regroup.” He can sense Oliver’s reluctance to move from this spot, the last place they know Felicity was close to. He thinks if he doesn’t push, Oliver might stay here forever.

 “Ollie,” Laurel says carefully, and Oliver looks at their team.

 “We gotta go,” Diggle says again. Oliver nods.

 This isn’t the first time Diggle holds the team together. But is the first time he sees Oliver such a broken man.

➳

She doesn’t know how much time passes. In fact, there are so many things she doesn’t know that it’s shaping up to become a phobia.  The only source of light inside the tiny room is a white fluorescent lightbulb, and there aren’t any windows –not surprising if they really are underground- so she had no way of knowing what time of day it is. If the sun had even risen yet, that is.

Two guards- at least, she assumes they were guards- had escorted her to the white, sterile little room what seems like hours ago, just after she’d refused her father’s offer.

She was unceremoniously dragged out and for a second she was sorry for running her mouth and saying no-she’d thought she was going to die. Her entire life hadn’t flashed in front of her eyes but she _had_ imagined her mom and Oliver, when they found out. She’d been more scared of their pain than what came next, or if she might feel it-and then they’d arrived in front of a door and pushed her inside.

She was so relieved she felt into the small cot inside and nearly sobbed. But her throat was dry and she didn’t think crying would help her much in that department so she didn’t.

That’d been…a while ago. No one has come to see her since, and she is sure a lot of time has passed. She’s determined not to fall asleep, but had dozed off once or twice. The entire afternoon falls on her like an avalanche, and now that she’s alone and apparently in no immediate danger-her body wants to shut down on her. She feels hungry and tired-she really regrets not taking Oliver up on his offer of bringing her lunch to the office that afternoon.

No longer can she fantasize about a Big Belly Buster when footsteps sound outside and she braces herself again.

“We don’t have anyone like her this side of the country.” It’s her father. She hates herself a little for how relieved she is to hear him. For some reason she doesn’t believe he’d be the one to kill her; for whatever reason, out of pride or misguided possessiveness…she thinks he might keep her safe in here.

“You have one chance. I do not enjoy wasting my time, Kuttler.” It’s Darhk. And the feeling of relief is gone. Her father- _that man,_ he certainly doesn’t deserve that tittle- works for this people. He steps inside a second later.

“Felicity.”

“What do you really want?” she asks. Defiance blazes in her eyes as she meets his, even though she’s sure her chin is wobbling.

“You get that pride from your mom,” he says conversationally, and it’s jarring to Felicity. The way he talks to her as if he knows her, as if he had stayed long enough to get to.

“Don’t talk about mom,” she tells him. She needs to keep her lives separate, her family and her day job on one side and Team Arrow and her night job on the other-but it’s obvious now that she can’t. Because her father is a fucking supervillain sidekick!

He sighs.

“He would’ve killed you already, Lissy. But I asked him to hear me out, and he did, which doesn’t happen very often. Want to know why? Because you’re remarkable.” He looks like he’s proud of her. “He knows it’s not worth it, spending H.I.V.E resources and months of work, in something you can do in days. In fact, something you already have part of.”

All at once she knows what this is about.  She’s never going to leave college behind, is she?

“Tweak the code of your ‘supervirus’. Instead of encrypted databases it would be so easy to crack security camera footage, webcams, smart phones-“

“Global espionage,” she bites out, a sinking feeling in her gut.

“Espionage is such an ugly word, Lissy.” It sends a shiver through her, when she sees herself in him.  “Think of it as surveillance. And let’s not get ahead of ourselves, it won’t be global. National by the end of year, maybe. Right now, all we want the program to cover is Star City. You can do that.”

A software that could find anyone, anytime, live. Damien could write the name of any of her friends, of Oliver, and find him, just like that. He could do that to anyone in the country, for any reason. Gifted children taken from their homes, heroes like Barry, shot down in their sleep. She can do that; she’d be the catalyst they’d use. Her life isn’t worth that destruction.

His father looks at her carefully, and then it’s like something goes out of him. He drops to his knees in front of her, grabbing her hands in his cold ones. She’s in too much shock to push him away.

“ _Lissy_ ,” he sounded frantic, _“I don’t have a lot of time._ They’re not listening on us anymore, I don’t think, but with Darhk you never know. I want to get you out of here, okay. Before…I had to act because he has eyes on all of us, but _I’ll get you out_.”

She can’t think-can’t breathe. What?

“Dad?”

“But you need to do this, all right? I won’t upload it, and you’ll be out of here before he realizes that, but as a show of good faith—for him to keep you alive, you have to give him _something_. Ok?”

She has a flash of her mom again, of Oliver- _she can’t leave them_ \- and this is…this is her only chance. But her life is not worth the weapon she’d be putting in Damien Darhk’s hands. But her father, if he… _Can she trust him?_

She knows what her answer will be.

“I’ll do it. If you promise not to upload it, I’ll do it.”

➳

Oliver stands with his back to the computers, the strange person sitting in front of them doing nothing to help him cope.

They’d followed the wheel tracks from the back of the factory to the highway, where it had become impossible to figure where they’d gone next. There were no cameras until miles after that intersection. They’d returned to the lair.

What followed had been some of the worst hours of Oliver’s life. Dawn had broken with Curtis still on the computers, working wildly, but they’d gotten nothing to go on. 47 cars on the highway fit the wheel size and timeframe and following each one of them was taking time they didn’t have. It was a shot in the dark.

Laurel had left first thing in the morning to report Felicity as a missing person, but he had no faith that the police would find her before they did. Darhk was a ghost.

It was close to midday now, and they were nowhere near a concrete course of action. Curtis, eye’s dropping, had been hitting dead ends for the past two hours, and had finally let the system work automatically and succumbed to sleep in Felicity’s chair. Now all they had left was waiting.

He could feel them looking at him, not to lead anymore-it was clear Dig had taken that role- but as if waiting for him to break down. He wouldn’t, not again. He’d felt sharp anguish tearing at his chest when he thought he was seeing her die. Now all he wanted, all he _needed_ \- was to find her safe.

He sighed, running his hand through the nape of his neck, anything to counteract the pressure he felt in his skull.

“Ollie?” Thea asked him for the fourth time that hour.

“I’m fine,” he answered automatically. He’d been keeping himself pin straight, his arms closed over his chest, for the past hour. His muscles ached from it, but he couldn’t move. Even the pounding headache behind his eyes had become white noise by now.

“You haven’t sleep in over 24 hours Oliver,” came Diggle’s voice. “You haven’t eaten-“

“Dig’s right,” his sister said, out of her red leather now and looking that much younger for it. “You won’t help felicity like this.”

“She’s smart,” Dig said. “She can keep herself safe until we find her, but to _do_ that we need to be on our top game-“

“What if she can’t?” he asks, and if Diggle’s reaction is anything to go by the man can read the anguish he feels on his face. “I can’t afford to sleep when she’s out there. This is Darhk, he got the drop on both of us and we’re trained, and she’s-I should have trained her. I shouldn’t have thought she’d always be safe down here-“

“Felicity is a genius, Oliver. Our girl is smarter than Palmer, smarter than anyone we’ve met. I bet she can even go toe to toe with Darhk in the intellect department.” Diggle opens his palm, calm. For a second Oliver wants to ask him _how_ he can keep such a cool head when it’s Felicity they’re talking about. But the he notices the helmet and keys by the door, in casse they need to make a run for it, the cups of coffee strewn around, and he realizes Dig feels the same as him- but he’s the one keeping them together.

“She’s worth more to them alive than dead, Ollie,” Thea says. “I don’t like thinking of it this way but it’s the truth.”

He looks at the floor, rubbing his hand over his face; exhaustion is nearly as debilitating as grief.

“We know Darhk is a man of resources,” Dig continues. “We know he personally collects gifted people for HIVE…Felicity is a gifted as they get, man. She’s alive. You have to believe that. He’s trying to knock you off your game, and he’s succeeding.”

“Dig-” Everything catches up to him then, he sees clearer than he has in months. “ _I’m sorry._ About Lyla, I-“

“I know,” Dig stops him, looking as if he understands. He notices Thea stepping away from them and can only imagine what Felicity would say if she was here. “I know, brother.” He says, pulling him into a hug. “We’ll find Felicity.” Dig slap his back and pulls away, a strong hand on his shoulder. “Get some sleep.”

Amidst everything going wrong, something in his life has gone back to the way it always was when Dig gives him something akin to a smile.

“Thea, drive your brother home.”

➳

 

“I’m just saying- the processing power to handle a hack like that? _And_ then, of course, process the information in any kind of form that a human could comprehend is just- _ginormous_.”

Her brain doesn’t seem to get the signal that she’s being kept prisoner in a place with _very bad people_ , because she just keeps blabbering. Not that anything she’s saying is inaccurate.

Felicity walks down the halls of what seems like a nonsensically big facility, in step behind her father, and tries hard to memorize corners turned, doors-anything. Like they do in movies. After all, if she manages to escape she’ll need to know where the exit is, right? But the hallways all look the same, and there are no doors with obvious exit signs on top of them. She’s not sure why she thought there might be.

“I mean, just the hardware necessary… Even the NSA* doesn’t have it.”

They arrive at a set of white double doors. Why is everything white in this place?

“We are not the NSA,” her father says as he opens the door for her. What’s inside she classifies firmly into dream category. The servers alone… _God_.

“How long have you been here?” Is the first thing out of her mouth, and she notes no one inside so much as bats an eyelash at her arrival. It would have taken weeks, if not months to set everything up. And if they’re as deep underground as her father says… she shudders to think of the implications.

She and Oliver had left five months ago, thinking they left the city safe… and they were probably already here. While they were off traveling the world and enjoying each other and their newfound intimacy…Damien Darhk had been taking root in their city, worming itself in its belly like a cancer they couldn’t figure out how to eliminate now. An evil she was now at the mercy of, and trusting only her instincts to not give them the means to cause more damage.

There are cameras on every corner of the room. If she thought she could get a message out to Team Arrow that plan just went to crap, plus she doesn’t even know where she is and they’re probably not trusting her enough to give her something with Wi-Fi.

“Come on, Lissy,” her father says gently, a hand on her back. This time she doesn’t shrink away from the touch. A reminder of his promise.  “Get to work.”

She sits down and does just that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *National Security Agency of the US government
> 
> I'm sorry about the delay with this chapter, I spent a while tweaking it around. Also I'm really thankful of the reception this fic got, I appreciate all of your kudos and comments! 
> 
> I'm kinda new to the Olicity fandom, so this is my tumblr (smoakingarrows.tumblr.com), in case any of you guys want me to follow you or just talk about Olicity.


	5. Chapter 5

She doesn’t drag it out as long as she could have.

She could have spent maybe another week, at least a couple more days working on it; but she didn’t. Felicity isn’t completely sure they won’t kill her the minute she is done, but dragging out her work like in the thousand and one nights probably isn’t going to work. She is no _Scheherazade._

Day after day she followed her father from her room –it’s frightening enough that she’s come to consider the sad white room, _hers_ \- to the server’s room, and back again. They bring her food several times a day. They take her out walking (when her father walks by her in the hallways he looks at hear as though they share a secret.)

She hears the heavy footsteps outside her room every time, followed by the buttons on the keypad outside.

(She wonders if there was a way to figure out what numbers they were pressing just by the sounds. Oliver would have to tell her if such a thing could be done.) But it doesn’t matter anyways. It’s the only way in and out of the room, (which is considerably larger than the glorified closet she first got when she arrived, so at least that’s not completely awful.)

That was almost 5 days ago. All she’s been able to think off since that horrible night is her family. She hopes her mom remains safe In Vegas, that none of this has managed to touch her. She hopes her mom is unharmed because she knows just how much she’s already hurt the other part of her family.

Oliver…just the thought of him makes her chest feel tight these days.

He was heartbroken the last time she saw him, his eyes shining with the belief that she was done with them. With him. And that’s…that’s unthinkable to Felicity. She could not stop loving him any easier than she could stop breathing. But he is damaged, she knows, broken again and again in places that did not heal any stronger for it. She wielded enough power that she could hurt him, and she did. She dug her fingernails in every crevasse, every open wound loss left in him and confirmed what she’d always known him to believe. That he’s unlovable, unworthy.

 She hurt him, and it’s all that she thinks about when she tries to fall asleep at night, between the cold white sheets instead of theirs, her colorful blanket thrown over them. She hurt him, _them,_ terribly, and she’s terrified that this will end badly.

God, he must be worried out of his mind.

Oliver panicked when she was in harm’s way, even if it was for a few hours, even if she was right next to him. All this time…she’s almost afraid of what it could do to him. But she knows him, he’s so much stronger that he gives himself credit for, and he won’t have done anything he can’t come back from.  

She hopes the same is truth for her.

She sits at the station they gave her, going over the lines of code.

“You’re doing a good job,” her father tells her.  “But, _hurry up_.”

She doesn’t drag it out as long as she could have.

Eventually, she holds in at the tip of her fingers, just a few keystrokes away, a software than can find anyone in star city using everything at hand. Satellites, webcams, smart phones, traffic cameras. Facial recognition plus super virus equals big brother is watching. Felicity can appreciate the beauty in the creation, all that information in real time. It’s a feat of epic proportions for technology.

 If the software went online…the second it finished uploading, the power of god would be in human hands.

It’s as beautiful as it is terrifying.

 

 

They are all more than a little ragged. It’s been close to a week, 5 days with nothing, and Oliver is losing his mind.

He’s moved back in with Thea- he hasn’t been able to go back to their house. He can’t walk in and remember her tears as she told him she wanted things between them over now that he knows why she did it. He can’t sleep in their bed, their sheets that smell like her, and not have her in his arms.

Dark’s ghosts attack Star City’s public spaces three nights in a row and they’re too busy following the cold trails that Curtis, now a permanent fixture amongst them, can find, to look for Felicity. Every day he goes to Curtis and asks him for a new lead, a place to search, something they haven’t tried. He fights through the pain of his wounds and the burn behind his eyes and pushes himself. But there’s nothing. It’s as if she’s been swallowed by the earth itself and some days- some days Oliver can’t breathe with the weight of it. Sometimes he wants to sink under it.

 

Felicity takes a deep breath. She steels herself.

“It’s done,” she says.

Her dad looks over her shoulder. He doesn’t sit down and check the lines of code. He simply signals to the guards nearby, and Felicity’s heart drops to her feet.

“Upload it,” he barks out. The guards are on her and she’s not fast enough –there’s no way to run.  His father turns to look at her, grabbing her cheeks in a painful squeeze.

“We’ll see if you are as good as you think you are, Lissy,” he says, spit flying from his lips. He looks rabid, eyes hungry with power. She feels sick.

“No!” She tries to fight the grip of the guards, but she only manages to hurt herself.

“Take her back to her room,” her father orders her, and the men easily pick her up by her upper arms when she tries to drag her feet.

“You promised! No! You promised!” Her father doesn’t even look at, and Felicity lets the fight go out of her.

The guards push in the code on the keypad and push her back inside her room. She slams her hand on the door once they close it, and then sits down. She should save her strength.

Now that the code was uploading it was only a matter of time.

 

 

“Mr. Queen?” Curtis’ voice is in his ear, guiding him through back alleys. Every time he hears it, Oliver’s heart falls.

“You can call me Oliver, Curtis,” he forces himself to say, taking a sharp turn.

“I really think you need to come back…” Curtis says, and everything stops for. “There’s a woman named Lyla here?”

Oliver gets back in half the time.

 

“A.R.G.U.S. satellites picked up a crazy amount of activity,” Lyla explains. “It’s all traced back to this place.”

“Here,” Lyla said. The team stood around them, vibrating with the first lead in days. She pointed at the abandoned factory lot in the computer schematics.

 “I searched that factory already.” He’d scoured every inch of the place, looking for anything that might point him to Felicity –but there was nothing tying her to the place except the fact it was vacant and removed from the city. “It’s nowhere. Abandoned years ago.”

“A.R.G.U.S. satellites picked up a crazy amount of activity,” Lyla explains. “It’s all traced back to this place. I pulled satellite images and it looks just as empty, but it still registers,” Lyla says.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Thea says.

“Wait,” Dig says. “Could there be a way the activity is not inside the factory but-”

“Underneath it.” Oliver sees it now, and hope flares up in his chest, propelling him forward. “It’s got to be Felicity.”

“Oliver,” Laurel says, carefully.

“No, it’s her! She did this, she meant for us to find her!”

 

 

Felicity hopes they haven’t noticed yet.

Her father seemed too eager to upload the software and her little beacon of activity would be one of the first things to transmit.

It’s not bitter, the way she knew he’d betray her. She remembers Laurel telling her once that it wasn’t her first day, and well, this isn’t Felicity’s first day either.

She interwove the strands of code with an –to be honest ridiculously experimental- software to transform written data into signal, and codified it to access nearby phone towers. She thought if she made enough noise someone would notice.  Her computers back at the lair certainly will have. She’d hoped it would be enough to override the systems of the HIVE, too. If she could shut down the power, just for one second...

If it actually works …well she’s not sure what she’s going to do just yet.

So she thinks about code. It calms her. That was not the only thing she did either when she double crossed her father. _Oh God, she’s never double crossed anyone before_.

She left nodes open, unprotected. She should be able to shut down the software. It would upload yeah, and it would work. She’d made sure of it, she’d had no choice, but she also made sure she could shut it down. It shouldn’t be long now.

Darhk won’t be able to do much damage in Star City with such a small time frame. Felicity had to trust that to stay sane. Oliver, the team, they’d be safe. And she-

The digital pad outside her room buzzes, and the lights go out for a blink. The door is open.

She doesn’t waste any time, she took off her shoes a while ago. Felicity runs. She hasn’t even turned the corner when she hears the gunshot, followed by a scream of “Don’t shoot to kill! Dark’s orders!”

She opens a door and is met with a set of stairs, that thanks god have a metal latch she quickly snaps shut. She runs up, her breath coming in quick short pants. She opens the final door to what seems like a factory, decrepit and worn.

Dark’s voice reverberates through the public address system beneath her, and she doesn’t want to- but she listens.

“Miss Smoak,” he says amiably. “If you go one step further, I will put a bullet through your father’s brain.”

Her breath stops. She can hear the heavy footsteps running up the stairway, but she can also see the night sky through the window at the end of the hallway.

“We can avoid this mess if you wait for my men to get to you and return you here safely. It’s your choice.”

Her heart beats loud in her ears.

Felicity runs.

She crashes into the open air outside through a set of rusted metal doors and flees, her bare feet slamming against the asphalt, glass and broken bottles cutting her skin.

She runs, tears burning her eyes, until a pair of arms catch up to her from behind.

“No!” The scream is ripped from her throat as she struggles to get free, but it’s useless. “No!”

“Felicity! Stop, it’s me.” The arms hold her tighter. “It’s me,” the voice says as though through a sob.

She lets the fight go out of her, her lungs burning, and turns around slowly.

“Oliver?”


	6. Chapter 6

_There are no eyes here_   
_In this valley of dying stars_   
_In this hollow valley_   
_This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms_

_In this last of meeting places_   
_We grope together_   
_And avoid speech_   
_Gathered on this beach of the tumid river_

_._

_._

_._  

 “It’s me,” he says, he _sobs_ against the nape of her neck –his breath hot and fast. “It’s me. God, _Felicity_.” He holds her so tight she can feel all of his body against her back, and the relief is so sudden she feel dizzy with it, drunk. She knows his hands beneath the leather gloves holding her arms. She knows his voice beneath the modulator. She knows his body, she doesn’t even need to see his face.

“I love you. I love you.” He repeats, and she twist in his arm, facing him. His eyes are wet, dragging the black paint down his cheeks and she hold his cheek for a moment, the prickle of his beard beneath her palm the only thing that feels real. She hasn’t seen his face in what feels like years, she’s been waiting to die beneath the floor and all of it without a single last glance at his face.

“Oliver,” she cries, meeting his bewildered eyes beneath the Green Arrow mask.

He brings her closer and she sobs against his neck. The pain in her feet and the burn of her lungs, and the dirty, rabid _relief_ of seeing the sky again after so many days in a small room–it all overwhelms her, threatening to pull her apart like a nebula.

“We need to get out of here, okay?” Oliver asks her, and she can only nod, her arms tight against him.

“Don’t let me go,” she begs of him.

“I’ll never let you go, never again.” He sounds as desperate as she. Before she knows what’s going on they’re moving, his hands tight against her back keeping her close while he runs. She holds on tight to his shoulders but he’s not letting her fall.

“I need you to hold on to me, okay?” He asks, and then her world goes darker. It takes a second to understand she’s wearing a motorcycle helmet. His bike comes to life underneath them and she can faintly hear him speaking to the team while he drives, but she’s too wired to pay attention.

She can hear her heart beating loudly inside her ears, her blood flowing –or is it the wind flying by? She can’t tell. Everything feels too fast and too slow at the same time, and the single gun shot she heard before she ran out of that prison bounces around her head.

“Felicity? Talk to me, honey,” Oliver says, but she can hardly hear him over the sound of the wind. He’s not wearing a helmet, and that small detail is what gets through her convoluted mind, what makes her focus and _breathe_. He should be wearing a helmet. But she has it. Oh.

“Felicity, are you still with me?” He asks again, and she nods, then realizes he can’t see her so she tightens her arms around his chest.

Little by little, her breathing calms. She’s out of Darhk’s evil club house –she’s had so many dreams like this but the feel of Oliver under her finger tips cements this as the reality. Her father is dead. She has to shut down Dahrk’s Big Brother program in the next twelve hours. This is real.

“Where are we going?” She asks Oliver, but he doesn’t hear her, and she realizes her voice is perhaps more mangled than she thought.

She recognizes the dark streets leading to their house, and he parks on a dark alley a few houses back.

“We can’t go home,” she tells him when he gets off.  Her injured feet hit the pavement when she follows his lead, and the sharp stab of pain makes her gasp. Oliver is on her, taking the helmet off and cupping her cheeks.

“We need to go back to the lair, I need-“

“We’ll go back.” He promises. “Right now -right now I just need to touch you, okay? Let me take care of you, please. Your feet-“

Every time she shifts her weight she can feel glass fragments embedding themselves further in her flesh -but it’s the desperation in his eyes that makes her comply.

“Okay.”

They go back to their house through the backyards of their neighbors, and he doesn’t put her down for one second.

He kicks open the back door of their house, and they enter their home like thieves. It’s what she’s starting to feel like. The foyer looks the same as it did when she left a week ago, and the memory of Oliver broken down by her words hits her as fresh and painful as the first time.

“Come here,” he says, before picking her up again, saving her feet from more damage. He carries her into their bathroom, gently putting her down on the toilet. She had been so pleasantly surprised when she didn’t have to tell him to put the lid down. It was such a small thing, but he’d been nothing but good to her.

“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” he says. He’s pushed his hood down and taken his mask off, but even with the black grease around his eyes and the green leather he looks so vulnerable, so blatantly _her_ Oliver –her heart is on her throat.

He kneels in front of her, taking her leg gently in his hands. He methodically pulls the pieces of glass from her skin, wipes antiseptic over the worst of it. He doesn’t look at her as often now, as if he’s convinced himself she’s real. Or as if he’s afraid of what he’ll find in her eyes.

He presses a gentle kiss to her knee once he’s done, and it makes her eyes burn.

“I didn’t mean it. Not any of it.” She takes his face in her hands. “I love you. _I love you_.”

“I know.” He grabs her hands, presses his lips to them once, twice. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” she pleads, and a tear drags down her cheek. “Don’t apologize.” She’s the one who’s sorry.

“If I hadn’t-“

“It was Dahrk,” she says. “All of it. And…and my father, Oliver. He was there, he’s working for them.” The gun shot that rang out as she hurried to the door beats like a second heartbeat inside her head.  “He _was._ He killed him. Dark killed him because of me and I know-I _know_ what he did to me, and he used me back there. But his death is on me.”

She tells him everything through her tears, the words trip over themselves on her way out but he listens and holds her in the bathroom floor, and soon enough it stops feeling like she’s going to burst with it.

She rests her head against his shoulder, her feet against the cold tiles of the floor.

“You’re here, and that’s what matters,” he says. And then –like it’s a secret, like he pulls it out from the deepest parts of himself, “Please don’t ever leave me again.” That’s all it takes for her to drag his head down and fuse their lips together.

It was _I missed you_ , _I love you_ , _I can’t live without you,_ all rolled into one gasping moment of shared breath. She thought she might never see him again.

"I love you. This..." She holds his face between her hands. She needs him to understand. " _Us?_  It's the best thing that's ever happened to me, Oliver." 

His smile as tremulous as her own, the pure relief at being in each other's arms drowning everything else. She'll never let him go -she'll never hurt him again. That's a promise to herself she intents to keep. Felicity runs her hands down his arms, down his chest, her lips burning kisses over every inch of skin she can reach. She knows what he meant about needing to touch her –she’s burning with that same need. It feels as much like relief, as an affirmation.

She swings one of her legs over his hips, bringing her body that much closer to his, and his arms envelope her, the cold of the room they kept her in disappearing with the warmth of his touches. They shed their clothes in a frenzy, and he's so painfully delicate with her wounds it sends a fresh wave of tears to her eyes.

She's crying, and their kisses are thick and hurried -like time is running out, not like they've just been gifted more of it.

He slips his hand between her legs, thumbing insistently at her clit, but she doesn't care for it. She wants him inside of her now even if it'll be uncomfortable at first. She's spent too much time wondering if she'd ever get this feeling again, or if his face marred by sorrow would be the last memory of Oliver she'd have before they killed her. 

He thrusts home with a shudder and it feels like completion. There's no rhytmn to it, they're both too on edge to be graceful and do much else than writhe and paint the picture perfect of longing. It doesn't last very long, and it's not specially good, but when she gasps her release agaisnt his lips

-it’s the closest to peace Felicity’s felt in days.


End file.
